The poet-philosopher Emerson declared that he studied geology that he
might better write poetry.
For a moment the two elements of the proposition stand aghast and defiant;
but only for a moment. The poet, who from the top looks down upon the
whole horizon of things can never use the tone of authority if his gaze be
a surface one. He must know things in their depth in order that the
glance may be sufficient.
The poet leaves his geology and botany, his grammar and rhetoric on the
shelf when he makes his word picture. After he has expressed his thought
however he may have occasion to call on the books of science, the grammar
and rhetoric and _these may very seriously interfere with the spontaneous
product._ So do the sentries posted on the boundary of the painter’s art
protect it from the liberties taken in the name of originality.
“The progressive element in our art,” says the author of “The Law of
Progress in Art,” “is the scientific element. . . . Artists will not be
any more famous for being scientific, but they are compelled to become
scientific because they have embraced a profession which includes science.
What I desire to enforce is the great truth that _within_ the art of
painting there exists, flourishes and advances a noble and glorious
_science_ which is essential and progressive.”
“Any one who can learn to write can learn to draw;” and every one who can
learn to draw should learn to _compose_ pictures. That all do not is in
evidence in the work of the many accomplished draughtsmen who have
delineated their ideas on canvas and paper from the time of the earliest
masters to the present day, wherein the ability to produce the details of
form is manifest in all parts of the work, but in the combination of those
parts the first intention of their presence has lost force.
Composition is the science of combination, and the art of the world has
progressed as do the processes of the kindergarten. Artists first
received form; then color; the materials, then the synthesis of the two.
Notable examples of the world’s great compositions may be pointed to in
the work of the Renaissance painters, and such examples will be cited; but
the major portion of the art by which these exceptions were surrounded
offers the same proportion of good to bad as the inverse ratio would
to-day.
Without turning to serious argument at this point, a superficial one,
which will appeal to most art tourists, whether professional or lay, is
found in the relief experienced in passing from the galleries of the old
to those of the new art in Europe, in that one finds repose and
experiences a relief of mental tension, discovering with the latter the
balance of line, of mass and of color, and that general simplicity so
necessary to harmony, which suggests that the weakness of the older art
lay in the last of the three essentials of painting; form, color and
composition. The low-toned harmonies of time-mellowed color we would be
loath to exchange for aught else, except for that element of disturbance
so vague and so difficult of definition, namely, lack of composition.
[Fundamental Forms of Construction]
In the single case of portrait composition of two figures (more difficult
than of one, three or more) it is worthy of note how far beyond the older
are the later masters; or in the case of the grouping of landscape
elements, or in the arrangement of figures or animals _in_ landscape, how
a finer sense in such arrangement has come to art. Masterful composition
of many figures however has never been surpassed in certain examples of
Michael Angelo, Rubens, Corregio and the great Venetians, yet while we
laud the successes of these men we should not forget their lapses nor the
errors in composition of their contemporaries.
Those readers who have been brought up in the creed and catechism of the
old masters, and swallowed them whole, with no questions, I beg will lay
aside traditional prejudice, and regarding every work with reference to
neither name nor date, challenge it only with the countersign “good
composition.” This will require an unsentimental view, which need not and
should not be an unsympathetic one, but which would bare the subject of
that which overzealous devotion has bestowed upon it, a compound
accumulation of centuries.
The most serious work yet written on composition, Burnet’s “Light and
Shade,” was penned at a time when the influence of old masters held
undisputed sway. The thought of that day in syllogism would run as
follows: The work of the Old Masters in its composition is beyond
reproach. Botticelli, Raphael, Paul Potter, Wouvermans, Cuyp,
Domenichino, Dürer, Teniers et al., are Old Masters. Therefore, we accept
their works as models of good composition, to be followed for all ages.
And under such a creed a work valuable from many points of view has been
crippled by its free use of models, which in some cases compromise the
arguments of the author, and in others, if used by artists of the present
day, would only serve to administer a rebuke to their simple trust, in
that practical manner known to juries, hanging committees and publishers.
[Why Art Without Composition is Crippled: The Madonna of the
Veil--Raphael; The Last Judgement--Michael Angelo; Birth of the Virgin
Mary--Durer; The Annunciation--Botticelli; In Central Park; The
Inn--Teniers]
The slight advance made in the field of painting during the past three
centuries has come through this channel, and strange would it seem if the
striving of this long period should show no improvement in any direction.
Composition is the mortar of the wall, as drawing and color are its rocks
of defence. Without it the stones are of little value, and are but
separate integrals having no unity. If the reader agrees with this, then
he agrees to throw out of the category of _the picture_ all pictorial
representations which show no composition. This classification eliminates
most of the illustrations of scientific work; such illustrations as aim
only at facts of incident, space or topography, photographic reproductions
of groups wherein each individual is shown to be quite as important as
every other, and which, therefore, become a collection of separate
pictures, and such illustrations as are frequently met with in the daily
papers, where opportunities for picture-making have been diverted to show
where the victim fell, and where the murderer escaped, or where the man
drowned—usually designated by a star. These are not pictures, but
perspective maps to locate events. Besides these, in the field of
painting, are to be found now and then products of an artist’s skill
which, though interesting in technique and color, give little pleasure to
a well-balanced mind, destitute as they are of the simple principles which
govern the universe of matter. Take from nature the principles of
balance, and you deprive it of harmony; take from it harmony and you have
chaos.
A picture may have as its component parts a man, a horse, a tree, a fence,
a road and a mountain; but these thrown together upon canvas do not make a
picture; and not, indeed, until they have been arranged or composed.
The argument, therefore, is that without composition, there can be no
picture; that the composition of pictorial units into a whole _is_ the
picture.
Simple as its principles are, it is amazing, one might almost say amusing,
to note how easily they eluded many artists of the earlier periods, whose
work technically is valuable, and how the new school of Impressionism or
Naturalism has assumed their non-importance. That all Impressionists do
not agree with the following is evidenced by the good that comes to us
with their mark,—“Opposed to the miserable law of composition, symmetry,
balance, arrangement of parts, filling of space, as though Nature herself
does not do that ten thousand times better in her own pretty way.” The
assertion that composition is a part of Nature’s law, that it is done by
her and well done we are glad to hear in the same breath of invective that
seeks to annihilate it. When, under this curse we take from our picture
one by one the elements on which it is builded, the result we would be
able to present without offence to the author of “Naturalistic Painting,”
Mr. Francis Bate.
“The artist,” says Mr. Whistler, “is born to pick, and choose, and group
with science these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the
musician gathers his notes and forms his chords until he brings forth from
chaos glorious harmony. To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken,
as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano. That
Nature is always right is an assertion artistically, as untrue as it is
one whose truth is universally taken for granted. Nature is very rarely
right to such an extent, even, that it might almost be said that Nature is
usually wrong; that is to say, the condition of things that shall bring
about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common
at all.”
Between the life class, with its model standing in academic pose and the
pictured scene in which the model becomes a factor in the expression of an
idea, there is a great gulf fixed. The precept of the ateliers is paint
the figure; if you can do that, you can paint anything.
Influenced by this half truth many a student, with years of patient life
school training behind him, has sought to enter the picture-making stage
with a single step. He then discovers that what he had learned to do
cleverly by means of routine practice, was in reality the easiest thing to
do in the manufacture of a picture, and that sterner difficulties awaited
him in his settlement of the figure into its surroundings—background and
foreground.(1)
Many portrait painters assert that it is the setting of the subject which
gives them the most trouble. The portraitist deals with but a single
figure, yet this, in combination with its scanty support, provokes this
well-known comment.
The lay community cannot understand this. It seems illogical. It can only
be comprehended by him who paints.
The figure is tangible and represents the known. The background is a
space opened into the unknown, a place for the expressions of fancy. It
is the tone quality accompanying the song, the subject’s reliance for
balance and contrast. An inquiry into the statement that the accessories
of the subject demand a higher degree of artistic skill than the painting
of the subject itself, and that on these accessories depend the carrying
power of the subject, leads directly to the principles of composition.
“It must of necessity be,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, “that even works of
genius, like every other effect, as they must have their cause, must also
have their rules; it cannot be by chance that excellencies are produced
with any constancy or any certainty, for this is not the nature of chance;
but the rules by which men of extraordinary parts, and such as are called
men of genius, work, are either such as they discover by their own
peculiar observations, or of such a nice texture as not easily to admit
being expressed in words, especially as artists are not very frequently
skillful in that mode of communicating ideas. Unsubstantial, however, as
these rules may seem, and difficult as it may be to convey them in
writing, they are still seen and felt in the mind of the artist; and he
works from them with as much certainty as if they were embodied upon
paper. It is true these refined principles cannot always be made palpable,
as the more gross rules of art; yet it does not follow but that the mind
may be put in such a train that it still perceives by a kind of scientific
sense that propriety which words, particularly words of impractical
writers, such as we are, can but very feebly suggest.”
Science has to do wholly with truth, Art with both truth and beauty; but
in arranging a precedence she puts beauty first.
Our regard for the science of composition is acknowledged when, after
having enjoyed the painter’s work from the art side alone, the science of
its structure begins to appear. Instead of the concealment of art by art
it is the suppression of the science end of art that takes our cunning.
“The picture which looks most like nature to the uninitiated,” says a
clever writer, “will probably show the most attention to the rules of the
artist.”
Ten years ago the writer took part in an after-dinner discussion at the
American Art Association of Paris over the expression “the rules of
composition.” A number of artists joined in the debate, all giving their
opinion without premeditation. Some maintained that the principles of
composition were nothing more than aesthetic taste and judgment, applied
by a painter of experience.
Others, with less beggary of the question, affirmed that the principles
were negative rather than positive. They warned the artist rather than
instructed him; and, if rules were to follow principles, they were rules
concerning what should not be done. The epitome of the debate was that
composition was like salt, in the definition of the small boy, who
declared that salt is what makes things taste bad when you don’t put any
on.
[Three Ideas in Pictorial Balance]
The Classic Scales—equal weights on even arms, the controlling idea of
decorative composition.
A later notion of balance—the Steelyard, a small weight on the long arm of
the fulcrum, admitting great range in the placement of balancing measures.
The Scales or Steelyard in perspective, developing the notion of balance
through the depth of a picture discoverable over a fulcrum or neutral
space.